Teaching "How are You" to ESL Students

Brendan Dalybrendan_daly [at] yahoo.com.au

This article provides information about first topic initiation in
casual conversation and presents a simple procedure for demonstrating
and practicing appropriate responses when beginning conversations and
initiating first topics.

Introduction

EFL/ESL students commonly treat "How are you?" as a literal inquiry
about their health and there is a tendency to give an overly 'honest',
but inappropriate, reply. That is to say the fundamental intent to
convey general sociability, rather than specific meaning, is lost.
Moreover, EFL/ESL student soften do not know how to initiate a first
topic immediately after "Howare you?" as evidenced by the uncomfortable
silences that commonly occur after "How are you?" A number of factors
can be seen to contribute to this delay, affective factors, such as
shyness and fear of failure, linguistic factors, such as limited
knowledge of relevant vocabulary and/or grammar, and lastly, a lack of
experience. Indeed it is this very lack of experience that can limit
exposure and with it access to the various conventions commonly
employed when responding to "How are you?"

Like any other complex human endeavor, "How are you?" looks
relatively straightforward when done by someone who has mastered the
conventions involved and no longer has to think about what they are
doing. However, for a non-native speaker getting past "How are you?"
can be quite an ordeal.

As a language instructor, I have also found teaching "How are you?"
to be time consuming and rarely as successful as I had hoped it to be.
That was, until came across a very simple observation: whoever speaks
first gets to initiate the first topic (Schegloff 1986).

Furthermore, conversation openings have been observed to follow a
basic sequence structure that consists of a set of routine conventions
(Schegloff 1986). Consider the following example:

A: Hi

B: Hi

A: How are you?

B: Fine. How about you?

A: Fine, thanks. So did you have a good weekend?

Although this example is made up it serves to illustrate the very
important point made above: the first speaker gets to initiate the
first topic (Schegloff 1986). (Even if turns 1 and 3 and 2 and 4 are
combined speaker A will still end up initiating the first topic.)

Obviously, natural responses to "How are you?" are not fixed,
however, the variation that does exist also tends to be of a
conventional nature. Schegloff (1986: 129) observes that there are
three basic responses to "How are you?": positive (terrific) negative
(terrible) and neutral (fine). In general, he observes, that neutral
responses are preferred as they get through "How are you?" quickly (op
cit: 129). On the other hand, positive and negative responses tend to
'open up' "How are you?" sequences; for example, if someone says they
feel terrible when asked how they are, the person who asked the
question will usually try to find out why (ibid).

However, as Schegloff (1986) points out, it is an
oversimplification to consider responding to "How are you?" as a choice
among A, B, or C; for example, speakers who are familiar with each
other's style can recognise smaller subsets of these groups and a
neutral expression like "Okay" can actually be heard as negative
because it does not sound like something the speaker would usually say
(op cit: 129). Beyond the words themselves prosodic features -- sound
characteristics like loudness or duration of stress on a syllable,
together with changes in the pitch of voice -- can also shape a
response as neutral, negative or positive (op cit: 130).

As such, EFL/ESL students need to be made better aware of the
dimensions of these natural, but conventional, variations in opening
sequences.

However, classroom 'conversations' tend to be removed from real
world conversation in which everyone has an equal right to speak.
Moreover, students also have various expectations about the classroom,
not the least of which is that the teacher tells them what to do.
Therefore, as the right to initiate action is reserved for the teacher,
there is a natural tendency for teachers to commonly be speaking first
and to naturally initiate a first topic. Given this, students do not
really get the opportunity to practice topic initiation.

One way around this problem is to approach instruction over several
stages; direct instruction via an awareness raising activity, which is
followed by an opportunity for student experimentation. Following
pertinent feedback, students can be encouraged to mingle and further
test out a variety of responses. Finally, students should be allowed an
opportunity to report back on their experimentation.

Warm-up

Begin by eliciting a range of responses to "How are you?" in
plenary. At this point it may also be useful to outline the nature of
the exercise to establish its general direction and heighten student
motivation.

Awareness Raising

Using a written example, similar to the one above, the teacher runs
through a basic example of an opening sequences to highlight the basic
principle that the first person to speak wins the right to initiate the
first topic. (It may also be useful to show various permutations such
as combining turns 1 and 3 and 2 and 4 in the example above to show
that the first speaker still ends up with the right to initiate the
first topic.)

Reflection

Next, in small groups the class can group their responses from the
warm up activity under positive, negative and neutral. In plenary,
groups can report back and the whiteboard can be used as a focal point
for the activity. This should afford an opportunity to explore any
exceptions that arise. If no positive or negative responses were
elicited in the warm-up this is also a useful stage to generate some.

Experimentation

Here, the students are allowed to circulate and practice doing
opening sequences with neutral responses and then initiating a topic
that is either teacher assigned or student generated. Once the students
have been given an opportunity to report back and received appropriate
feedback, they can be encouraged to test out replying to positive and
negative responses and initiating a first topic. For more advanced
students it is also possible to explore the prosodic features mentioned
above.

Report

Initially in small groups and then in plenary, students compare and
contrast positive/negative responses to "How are you?" with neutral
responses. When students are encouraged to critically observe the
replies to their positive and negative responses, and if the first
speaker notes what happens to the topic they had planned to initiate
when they are placed in a situation where they have to reply to a
positive or negative response, then this kind of empiricism, with its
promotion of critical thought, can facilitate the onset of competence.

Getting past "How are you?" felicitously is the first step towards
opening routines that allow students to smoothly move on to initiate a
first topic. Hopefully, the exercise presented here provides language
teachers with a practical activity to develop language learners ability
to handle this most ordinary of human interactions.